Robert M. Royalty, «Dwelling on Visions.On the Nature of the so-called ‘Colossians Heresy’», Vol. 83 (2002) 329-357
This paper argues that Revelation provides a social-historical, theological, and ideological context for the reconstruction of the Colossian opposition. The proposal is that the author of the Apocalypse arrived in Asia after the Jewish-Roman war; his "dwelling on visions" and prophetic activity challenged the emerging hierarchy within the churches, provoking a response in Paul’s name from the church leadership. Correspondences and parallels between the description of the opposition in Colossians and Revelation are developed exegetically, showing that eschatology and Christology were key issues in the dispute. This paper reexamines the heresiological rhetoric of Colossians, raising methodological questions about other scholarly reconstructions of the opposition as non-Christian.
Lightfoot to identify the Colossian opponents as some combination of Jews, Gnostics, or Hellenistic philosophers, the most likely conversation partners within the Christian community, and hence the targets of polemic, would be other Christians 13. The NT epistles and Acts provide solid evidence not only for the constant interaction among early Christian communities but also for the regular disturbances caused when traveling Christian teachers introduced new teachings into other communities 14.
Second, construing the polemic in the letter as part of an intramural Christian conflict calls into question the construction of the Colossian errorists as the "other". Casting Jewish, Gnostic, or pagan groups as the enemy within a canonized text without first considering Christian groups reads the polemical interactions of the earliest Christian communities within the narrow ideological confines of the canon. This move presupposes that Colossians expresses a "pure" form of proto-orthodox Christianity and the opponents were heterodox, if not heretical15. If not Jewish or Gnostic "heretics" or "errorists", the author’s opponents could also be "syncretistic", again with the implication that the author, usually Paul himself, expresses "pure" Christianity. For instance Clinton Arnold, a recent proponent of a fully developed theory of "syncretistic" origins for the opponents, notes that the "designation [i.e., syncretistic] is descriptive insofar as the competing teaching represents a blending of variety of religious